• Today's Diary offers consumers of British media a unique service. It will attempt to provide a You-Know-Who-free zone with added solace. Take Hugo Chávez, for example. Those who cheered You-Know-Who's demise must include many who most regretted the death of Venezuela's president for life (and vice versa). So both sides may take comfort and/or fright from reports that El Comandante is again among us, albeit in animal form. Nicolás Maduro, a Chavista candidate in the forthcoming elections, claims he appeared to him in the form of a chiquitico bird. Stranger still, Revolutionary, the Venezuelan-ridden winner of the Louisiana Derby, is also said to be the reincarnated president. If Latino magic realism were to establish a toehold here, as what animal would You-Know-Who reappear?

• Campaigners for the restoration of British industrial greatness (if you're reading this by the way, stop now, George Osborne) should take comfort from stargazing former D:Ream star, Oldham's Prof Brian Cox. Asked whether he got "pestered by the ladies" more in his keyboard career than he does now, the wholesome telly don told Q magazine: "Oh, now – without a doubt! It turns out that pop stars are actually rather dull, compared to physicists." Particle acceleration sexy? It just is.

• The news blackout on anything unconnected with You-Know-Who meant that the caning given by Ofsted inspectors to A4e, the challenged private training provider, failed to attract sustained attention. All of its inspection grades for quality of teaching and outcomes for learners were deemed to "require improvement". But overall effectiveness, not to mention leadership and management, was starkly deemed "inadequate", despite buckets of public money. This is not what You-Know-Who expected when she championed outsourcing in the 1980s. Listen very carefully and you can hear her snapping "Do I have to do everything myself?"

• Clear that diary, Dave. On 19 April rebel tabloid hack Richard Peppiatt is bringing his coruscating travelling play (irony alert) One Rogue Reporter to the prime minister's constituency theatre, The Chippie, at Chipping Norton. With its mockery of redtop antics, it's the obvious ticket gig for him to cheer up local chums, Rebekah and Charlie Brooks.

• We only said we'd try not to mention You-Know-Who today. Who better to forgive a broken promise? Among today's rich crop of You-Know-Who anecdotes is the time that unsung feminist hero Denis Thatcher was asked who wore the trousers in his house. "I do. I also wash and iron them." Former No 10 policy wonk Ferdy Mount recalls her rejecting tax credits as "unfair to the mill girls of Bolton". Nobody dared tell her there weren't any mills girls left in Bolton.

• In his own The Margaret Who Knew Me monograph, Tory Moneybags Lord Ashcroft remembers a private meeting with Denis being interrupted by his wife. "I immediately got up to greet her but she just said: 'Sit down, sit down. Would you boys like a cup of tea?' It was a strange feeling sitting there while the prime minister of the day disappeared into the kitchen." Film-maker Ken Loach's contribution was less cosy: "How should we honour her? Let's privatise her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It's what she would have wanted."

• Talking of state funerals (and who doesn't, at the campaigning Daily Mail this week?), Victorian Liberal PM William Gladstone, whose relations with his Queen were far frostier than You-Know-Who's with Her Maj, had a public (not state) bash in 1898 which was bombast-free. A plain oak coffin, no soldiers or military display of any kind – despite Britain then being at the summit of imperial pomp. What are the odds on Britain of 2013 over-compensating next Wednesday? Let us hope North Korea doesn't take advantage.